Communities of Remembrance

At my community group this past week we discussed different Biblical events and people. The focus of the discussion was times in their lives where their faith was tested and grown. These times in their lives were times where they came to know God better through either their trials or good times. We talked about people from Old Testament all the way through to the end.

Moses. Elijah. David. Lazarus. Martha. Mary. Paul. John.

There are so many stories to recount of how God was Faithful, Provider and Sovereign over circumstances in the lives of the righteous and unrighteous. God showed up time and again, or didn’t show time and again, so that His name might be proclaimed in all the earth.

It was interesting to talk about these and to think about how quickly these people forgot what God had just done in their lives. They often saw God do something amazing and incredible that only God could do and the next verse will read that they quickly forgot. They not only forgot what God had done, but they cried out against Him. They cried out in sin and then often rebelled and went the other direction away from God. This is a common thread that runs through the whole of Scripture.

God is good, all the time.

Humans rebel against Him and His goodness.

God reveals Himself and many believe and worship.

Humans forget and rebel again.

God is Faithful to the end.

I started reading through the book of Exodus, chronicling the life of Moses and the people of Israel coming out of Egypt towards the Promised Land. After reading this last night, a couple of main things stuck out to me about these events.

·         God is faithful, even when we are unfaithful and resist Him and His will for our lives.

·         God is ultimately after His name being proclaimed in the world, not our success.

Moses was born into struggle and strife. Moses was born a slave and should have been killed immediately, but was preserved and blessed for God’s purpose. He was raised up in the house of Pharaoh. He eventually kills a man and has to flee the land of Egypt to the wilderness, where He spends 40 years away from where God would send Him. Some would say here that he resisted what God meant for his life, but I believe that this ‘wilderness’ experience was necessary for him to grow into the man that God desired him to be.

Moses then met God in a burning bush and Moses still resisted God’s call on his life to go and speak.

“But Moses said to the LORD, ‘Oh my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since You have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.’ Then the LORD said to him, ‘Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now therefore go, and I will be your mouth, and teach you what to speak.’” –Exodus 4:10-12

God offered to fill His weaknesses with Himself, but Moses still resisted. God used Moses anyways, even though he resisted God’s call on his life. God is faithful even when we are unfaithful.

Second, God told Moses to go speak to Pharaoh and tell Him to let His people go. God threw in this caveat though: Pharaoh will not listen to you because I will harden his heart, but I want you to go tell him anyways. God just told Moses that nothing will come of you doing exactly what I tell you to do. God told him to just be faithful to do what God called him to do and leave the results to God. God continues to harden Pharaoh’s heart and do miraculous signs to show Himself as God Almighty, Yahweh, the LORD. But Moses is still unsuccessful in changing Pharaoh’s heart. God had to do the work, not Moses. God says this in the midst of all the plagues to Pharaoh.

                ‘But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.’ –Exodus 9:16

God could have just wiped them off the face of the earth with one breath, but wanted His name to be made famous and worshipped. God is ultimately after His name being proclaimed in the world, not our success.

Once God finally allows the people to leave Egypt, they get into much trouble in the wilderness. God set up important events in their culture to remind them of these Exodus experiences (Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread, etc.) In the wilderness, they constantly gripe and grumble and resist that God is Almighty, Provider, and Faithful. The Israelites were so forgetful and rebellious, not quick to listen and obey and so short-sighted. They desired their best good now, but God desires a better good that is far-reaching. God desires to show Himself as the only true God and desires that we become worshippers of Him only.

We are not unlike the Israelites. We are slaves to our sin and flesh. We want to be freed from that, but even when we are we still resist that God is after His glory and our good. We have ‘wilderness’ experiences. We gripe, grumble and forget. We run from Him, even as He is providing for us and being faithful to His promises. We do come back at times and worship Him for who He is. But, then we forget what He has done powerfully in front of our eyes and in the scope of human history. We need to be reminded of who God is. We need to be reminded of who we are. We need to be reminded of our need and His great Grace in the cross (i.e. The Passover). We need to be reminded that He is Faithful to the end.

This is why we need a community that is reminding us of these things. We need each other, because without each other, we will quickly forget all that God has done and all that God is.

I pray that our communities would be about reminding each other of God Almighty. I pray that our communities would be about the gospel and a constant remembrance of it.